


30 Days of Sestras

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29787210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: A series of snapshots.
Relationships: Helena & Sarah Manning
Comments: 75
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY MONTH HELENA AND SARAH!

“Fuck,” Helena says.

In the backseat next to her, Sarah jolts; somehow she’d been falling asleep, despite everything. She does the terrified, instinctive check: Helena (bloody, exhausted, alive), both of Helena’s babies (asleep, alive) (both of them) (shit, _both of them_ ), Art in the driver’s seat (alive, alive, alive).

She swallows. Her throat hurts. “Where’d you learn that one,” she rasps.

“What,” Helena says, “fuck? You think I do not know fuck?” She tilts her head to the side, and the passing streetlights spark off her eyes. She looks half-hysterical; Sarah’s sure she does too.

“No,” Sarah says, “You’re right, I shoulda known better. Hey, you can’t keep up the bad language, though. Your babies…” she trails off, overwhelmed again by the reality of Helena’s children. The warm living bundle in Helena’s arms, the matching one in Sarah’s arms – snuffling slightly, fingers clenching and unclenching in some dream-attempt to grab Sarah’s hand.

“My babies,” Helena says, dreamy and terrified. She looks down at her own bundle. “My babies. They finally came.” She lifts one hand, digs the heel of it into her forehead. “The bad Neos, they will—”

“No,” Sarah says, “no more Neos.”

“What about the bad man,” Helena says, “who—”

“He’s definitely not a problem anymore.” Sarah shoves her hair out of her face roughly and freezes when the baby in her arms stirs. She holds stock still until the little face goes sweet again in dreaming. There’s still a drop of blood on the inside of Sarah’s wrist. It must have dried there without her noticing, she must have missed it, she didn’t – and she sh—

Helena touches her hand. The bandage on her wrist glows neon luminescent in the midnight light and then goes again. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“What?” Sarah says stupidly.

“I’m sorry,” Helena says again, her voice patient and slow. “It hurts. The first time. Well, many times after the first time. And I think that probably it is good, that it hurts. But. You do not need more pain, _sestra_. Sarah. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t say that – I didn’t say I had. He…”

“Mm,” Helena says. She takes her hand away; Sarah can’t help the terrified yelp from the pit of her heart, the _put it back, please, put it back, don’t leave me alone_ – and she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t, but Helena looks at her sideways and puts her hand back anyways. She closes her fingers around Sarah’s and squeezes, once.

“Fuck,” Sarah says.

“You see. Special occasion. This once, we say fuck. After this, no more dirty language, only taking care of babies and not shooting people.”

“Yeah?” Sarah says. She hates the way her voice wavers.

“Yeah,” Helena says. She holds on tight to Sarah’s hand and Sarah stares out the window and holds back.

“I was so scared for you, Helena.” She watches her reflection in the window, the vague nervous jitter of her eyes.

Helena is silent for a moment. Then: “I was scared for me too.” She takes a breath, like she’s going to say something – then she doesn’t say anything. When she starts talking again Sarah knows it’s something else; it isn’t what she could have said before. “But now we are alright. And the Neo man is dead. And my babies are here. So.”

Sarah turns away from the window and looks at Helena. Helena blinks back at her, so utterly strange in her bloody hospital gown and oversized socks.

“Helena,” Sarah says. “I was terrified. Okay? Not – not for us, not for your babies. I mean, obviously I – but – look, meathead, I was scared for _you_. We all were scared for you. You can’t…shit. I’m, I’m messing this up, I’m – everyone loves you, Helena. We fought for you and we’d bloody do it all again. I’d do it all again. For you. You’re my sister. Okay?”

Helena jerks her head down, stares at her bandaged wrist. Her shoulders hunch. She licks her lips, looks back at Sarah.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” Sarah says. “Just wanted you to know.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

She reaches out and finds that Helena’s hand is already there to meet her. They lace fingers again. Sarah turns to look back out the window – to ignore her reflection entirely and watch the city, the police cars screaming in the opposite direction that they’re traveling. One by one the city streets unravel and weave themselves together again until they are Alison’s street, Alison’s house, the back of Alison’s house lit up warm and yellow in the night.

The gut punch of relief hits first: _thank god Art didn’t take us to S’ house_. Then the guilt: _I should be there_. Then the horror: _there isn’t anything to be there for, there isn’t anyone in the house, there isn’t anyone in the house anymore—_

“Out of the car, _sestra_ ,” Helena says. “I have to use the bathroom. And my arms are sleeping. Babies are heavy.”

“I,” Sarah says, and she untangles her fingers from Helena’s, and she gets out of the car. She cradles the baby in both arms and guiltily buries her nose in the ragged blankets to inhale the smell: mostly medical, anesthetic and old cotton, but underneath all that there’s a promise of something. The smell of babies says _this time will be better._ It’s always made her want to make promises that she’s terrified of trying to keep.

“Come on, Sarah,” Art says quietly. “It’s okay. You’re safe. Let’s go inside, alright?”

She looks up from the baby towards Alison’s house: the open doorway, the distant sounds of Alison and Donnie bustling and a delighted laugh that she recognizes as Cosima’s and the punch-drunk relief of a group of people who have been waiting, here, for her. They have been waiting for her to bring Helena home. Their love swallows Helena up in the doorway and welcomes her inside with open arms – blankets and hot chocolate and a loaf of bread and Sarah thinks _it’s okay, you’re safe_ , and then she starts crying.

“Yeah,” she says, “yeah, okay,” and she holds on tight to the future and she follows her sister inside.


	2. Chapter 2

The phone doesn’t ring for long enough. It only goes once, twice, and then Sarah’s voice says: “Hey. You alright?”

“Why are you awake,” Helena rasps into the phone. “Middle of night.” She jams her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder and keeps bouncing Arthur, who has moved on from the raw terrible screaming. He is now making siren wails, like he is a little police car inside of a baby. His face is scrunched up and red and terrifying.

“Is that Arthur?” Sarah says. “Or Donnie. Either Donnie, I guess.”

“Ha. Arthur. His little face is all red.”

“You checked the diaper, yeah?”

“Yes, it is not stinky.”

“Maybe he missed you,” Sarah says wryly. “Or he’s got gas again.”

“All we do is fart in this garage,” Helena says, carefully patting Arthur’s back and praying for burps. “All we do is fart and shit.”

“Dollar for the swear jar.”

“I do not have dollars.”

“I’ll pay next time I’m over.”

“ _You_ do not have dollars.”

“Shut up, I’ve got money. Piss off.”

Helena chuckles to herself before Arthur stops, seemingly surprised, and lets out an enormous burp. Then he says: _mnep mnep mnep_. He waves his hands a little. He falls asleep on Helena’s shoulder.

“Heard that from here,” Sarah says. Her voice is a static whisper. Helena isn’t answering; she has her eyes closed, flying through the waves of relief. He isn’t sick, he isn’t dying, she didn’t fail him. Just gas. It would be very nice if they would have less gas, but she can’t ask them to stop because they wouldn’t understand. Instead she hums a response to Sarah and carefully lowers Arthur into his bed, touching the tips of her fingers to his chest to check his breathing. Steady. She feels the beating of his heart.

“There we go,” she says. “Fast asleep.”

“You’re good at this,” Sarah says – easily, like it’s true. “I flipped my bloody lid every time Kira got upset.”

“Now I am flipping your lid. Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you awake at—” (she checks) “—3 in the night times?”

“Knew you’d be calling, didn’t I.”

“No. You didn’t.”

Sarah huffs slightly into the phone and says: “You know. My sleep schedule’s gone to hell with all the bloody cults and kidnappings, yeah? Plus I think I’m still on Iceland time.”

“Mm.”

“ _Mm_ yourself. You should be asleep too, eh?”

“Eh,” Helena says. “I do not sleep much. Did you have bad dreams?”

Silence. Then Sarah makes a long exasperated grunting sound that’s full of consonants. “You little shit,” she says. “You know I’ve been trying to get better about lying.”

“Sorry.”

“No you aren’t.” She sighs, shifts. “Not bad dreams. I didn’t get to sleep in the first place, alright? Every time I do a bloody floorboard creaks and I think S’ bloody corpse is still downstairs and I’ve got to go and get it and clean it up and get it ready for – look, I just – I’ve gotta move out, I can’t stay here. I know that Kira…

“Christ,” she says, “I shouldn’t be putting all this shit on you at 3 in the morning. It all worked out anyway, yeah? Got to answer your phone call.”

“You could stay with me,” Helena says quietly.

“In the Hendrixes’ bloody garage.” The twist of Sarah’s voice says that she thinks it’s funny, which is better than her hating the idea but not as good as her taking it seriously. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“You should not have to live in a house full of bad dreams.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve lived in a lot of them. One more’s not too bad. It’s for Kira anyways.” Sarah sighs. “You really should go to sleep, Helena. You don’t need to be awake for my shit.”

“I don’t want you to be awake with it alone.” Helena sits down on the edge of her bed. She looks out the moonlight window towards the beautiful view of cement and a stubborn bit of grass. She says: “I can stay with you. On the callings. Until you fall asleep.”

“You really don’t need to do that. I’m—”

“Where are you?”

“In the basement, actually. Weird, right?” Sarah laughs breathily, uneasily.

“Not really,” Helena says. “In laundry, yes? I have slept in laundry before.”

“Helena, whenever you say you’ve done something before I know that means it’s a terrible idea.”

“Maybe so! Who can say. Sleep on a pile of laundry. At least this is your house, yes?”

“Oh, I’m so gonna make you tell me your depressing laundry story someday,” Sarah says. “When we’re both awake.” There is a promising rustling noise from her end, though, like she is making a pile of her own sweaters and Kira’s dresses. Like she’s lying down in it. Like she feels safe enough to lie down.

Helena curls up on her side in her own bed. She doesn’t hang up the phone. “It will make you very sad,” she says. “So sad. You will have to buy me many donuts, because you feel so sad for me.”

“I’d buy you the donuts anyways.”

“You have no dollars.”

“Bitch,” Sarah says warmly. The rustling gets louder, and then her voice gets closer to the phone and quieter. “I can’t believe I’m sleeping in laundry,” she whispers. “God, we’re all so fucked up.”

“Are you uncomfortable?”

Quiet, then: “No.”

“Good,” Helena says. “You see, I am the expert. I know things.”

“Mm-hm.”

Sarah’s breathing hisses static like a distant ocean. Helena breathes back to her. In the quiet, she whispers: “I liked the laundry.

“It was warm,” she says. “I had been cold for a very long time. I had forgotten it. Being warm.”

“Alright,” Sarah whispers back, “alright, I get it, your life was shite.” Her words are beginning to slur happily with exhaustion. Helena closes her eyes – they’re curled up in the womb, in two sleeping bags in a tent, on the floor of Alison’s house on that very last night. She can feel their heartbeats coming together, beating at the same time.

“Not anymore,” she says, but Sarah is already asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The Hendrixes’ garage may smell like absolute shit, but: if you’re there at the right time in the afternoon, the light tumbles through the window hazy and gold. Sarah tries to get here a few minutes before the right time, when she comes, so that she can stop paying attention to the math problems she’s supposed to be solving and can instead watch the dust and hair float in pointless circles around Helena’s room.

“Do your home works,” Helena says from the bed.

“You’re supposed to be asleep,” Sarah says. “Go back to sleep, meathead.”

There’s a sleepy shuffling and Helena sits up, blinking down at the floor to where Sarah is sitting surrounded by unfinished math problems. She squints muzzily at the practice workbook and then blinks back to Sarah again. “Do the maths. You are thinking too hard. It upsets the babies.”

“They’re asleep.”

“They will have bad dreams.”

“Can’t be worse than mine.” Fuck. “Math dreams, I mean. I get ‘em all the time. All I dream about is equatorial triangles or whatever. I don’t even know why I have to learn all this shit.”

Helena shrugs a shoulder lazily. “I did not learn it either.”

“And look at us now.”

Helena snorts and nonchalantly rolls over so she tumbles off the bed and onto the floor. Her head pops up like a meerkat’s as she checks one baby – the second – and then crawls across the floor to sit by Sarah. “Oh, no,” she says. “These are the ones with letters inside of them.”

“Worst kind.” Sarah nudges her shoulder against Helena’s and Helena flops onto her drowsily. “Ah, Christ, you smell like shit.”

“I have not bathed,” Helena says into Sarah’s shoulder.

“Take a shower!”

Helena shakes her head, banging her cold nose into Sarah’s neck repeatedly. “What if they cry,” she says. “What if they need me.”

“Then I’ll bounce ‘em for a bit or give ‘em a bottle. That’s why I’m here, yeah?”

“You are here to avoid your maths,” Helena says. “I know this. You know this.”

“ _And_ to get you to wash up. Go steal all of Alison’s soap. If somethin’ really bad happens I’ll come and get you, alright?”

“Mmph,” Helena says. Sarah pokes her in the side with her pencil eraser and Helena doesn’t jump even a little bit, because she has stupid fucking assassin reflexes.

“Seriously,” Sarah says. “Get up, go.”

The laziness shakes off of Helena and she sits up, sniper-still, watching Sarah with calculating eyes. Her jaw is set. “You will look after them.”

“Helena, it’s five bloody min… _yes_. Yes, I’ll take care of them.”

“There is a gun in the drawer on the left of the table.”

“Bloody hell.”

Helena scrutinizes Sarah for a few long, endless seconds before she blinks and is suddenly Helena again. She leans in, pecks Sarah’s forehead, and hoists herself up off the floor to waddle out of the garage. The door opens to let in one gasp of fresh air before it closes again. Sarah does her own meerkat-check: no, they’re both still asleep. Tired from a morning of fussing. She looks back down at her workbook.

_It’s easy_ , says that kind and condescending voice in her head. _You should know how to do it by now_. The voice used to be S, but – thank god – her brain stopped whacking her in the face with that one recently. Now it’s Alison, unless it’s STEM shit. Then Cosima comes crawling out of the back of Sarah’s brain to blink at her, puzzled and amused despite herself: _you really don’t understand this? How can you not understand this at all?_

One of the babies burbles in his sleep, sighs, and goes quiet again. Sarah takes that as a cue to go back to ignoring the math problems; instead she stands up and wanders over to look into the left hammock. Christ, they’re cute babies. Squeaky clean, too – Helena washes them, she just doesn’t wash herself.

When Sarah checks, there is a pistol in the drawer of the side table. She doesn’t know when or where Helena got it.

She really should go fill out her workbook, try to beat her brain into understanding square roots and other bullshit. She already knows she won’t. She wanders around the garage, she sneaks a peek into Helena’s fridge, she opens another drawer to pull out that leatherbound journal. _Orphan Black_. When she flips to the right page, she can see the drawing of the two stick figures hugging each other: one with jagged swipes of hair, one with giant curls. Makes her heart all wobbly. She’s a sap.

The door wrenches open and Helena comes stumbling in, wide-eyed and wet-haired and wrapped in two towels. She is breathing heavily, like she’s just run a mile through a war zone instead of thirty meters through the Hendrixes’ house. She blinks at Sarah. She blinks at the babies. “Good?” she says urgently.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Yeah. We’re alright. Put some clothes on.”

Helena ignores her and checks in one hammock – the second – frowns and turns around and studies Sarah, like she’s afraid Sarah might’ve crawled under the sink and drank bleach in the two minutes she was gone. “Hi,” Sarah says.

Helena blinks at her. “I will go put clothes on,” she says.

“Please.” Sarah goes and sits down next to the sprawl of math, blank spaces waiting expectantly for answers she just doesn’t have. Part of her wishes that all of this was just high school again, the whole thing done over, so that she could just run away from this shit and leave the blank spaces open and empty forever.

“Being an adult’s the worst,” she says.

“Mm,” Helena says. “I’m very tired.”

“You want some tea?”

“No, kettle screaming will wake the babies.”

“I’ll cheat for you, yeah? I’m technically not a proper Brit anyway. I can make shitty tea. What’re they gonna do, kick me out of England again?”

Helena snorts, and then there’s a soft _fwumph_ ; Sarah looks over and sees Helena spread-eagled on the bed, dressed in a moth-eaten sweater and a pair of—

“Gross, meathead,” Sarah says. “Are those Donnie’s?”

“They are comfortable,” Helena says, sticking up one hairy, boxer-short-wearing leg.

“God, that doesn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, they are Donnie’s. _Sestra_ Alison buys clothes sometimes, and they are pink. So.”

“I’ll bring some of mine over,” Sarah says. “Clothes swap.” She takes the kettle to the sink and fills it with water.

Helena hums and then goes quiet, thoughtful. Then: “Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“You will be good,” Helena says. “On the test.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Yeah, cheers.”

“Even if you are shit at math.”

“ _Wow_. Rude.”

Helena chuckles to herself quietly, and Sarah puts the kettle on. She fishes out her old box of tea from under the sink, drops a teabag in a mug and adds five sugar cubes and another teabag to the other. She also unplugs the coffeemaker while she’s over there. Why everyone’s trying to get Helena hooked on coffee she does _not_ understand.

“Many sugars, please,” Helena says drowsily. “Many many sugars.”

“I got ‘em already,” Sarah says. “You can go ahead and nap if you want, babes. I’m right here, I’ve got it.”

“I know you do,” Helena says. The kettle starts to burble to itself, and Sarah turns it off before it can start shrieking. When she pours hot water into the mugs the steam rises in the afternoon light, perfect and gold.


	4. Chapter 4

Sarah peeks open the door to the garage and then sneaks inside, like a stray cat, so she’s come here to hide from something again. That’s almost always the reason she comes to visit, and Helena almost never minds. She could say: _I know the make-up test was today_. She could say: _I know you’re hiding from it, I know you’re hiding from thinking about it_. She won’t.

Instead, she says: “Good timing. Hello. You change the diapers.”

“Aw, gross,” Sarah says. “I already did all of that with Kira. It’s your turn.”

“If you want to hide here so nobody will ask you things, the price is diapers.”

Sarah slinks over to Helena in the rocking chair, reaches into her bag, pulls out a slightly crumpled brown paper bag. “But,” she says, “I brought you a bougie donut from that place Alison hates.”

Helena narrows her eyes at it. “Okay,” she says, “but you change the shittiest diaper. I am new mother, so tired, no energy. Give me the donut.”

Sarah rolls her eyes but gives Helena the donut. The bag is soggy from grease; Helena opens the bag, sniffs it, smells green things and dough and sugar. She buries her head in the bag and inhales green after green after green and listens to the sound of Sarah picking up Arthur, murmuring nothing in particular to him, changing his diaper. She imagines falling asleep in the donut bag and waking up and finding that Sarah has done everything already, and it’s all finished, and she can eat the bougie donut with the leaves on it and then fall asleep forever.

Then Sarah puts Arthur back down, and Helena takes her head out of the bag, and they’re both just still in the garage. She eats the leaf off of the donut. She stands up from her chair and carefully takes Donnie, burying her nose against his downy head to smell that new baby smell – the one that says _this time will be better_ , constant and soothing and sweet. She puts Donnie down on his blanket, sits down next to Sarah. She pretends Sarah isn’t looking at her.

“When’s the last time you went outside?” Sarah says.

“This morning.”

“Not outside like Alison’s backyard. Like outside outside.”

Helena shrugs. She folds the diaper the right way around her son and pretend that this takes all of her focus.

“We should go get lunch or something,” Sarah says. “ _Don’t_ say you have bread here, I know you’ve got your weird loaf of frozen bread. I mean at an actual bloody restaurant. We’ll book a spot on Alison’s calendar and get her to babysit, yeah?”

“I don’t know,” Helena says. “Maybe later.”

Sarah nudges Helena’s shoulder with hers. “Or maybe soon,” she says.

Clean and changed, Donnie bumbles towards Arthur and almost knocks him over. They wave their little hands at each other like they’re surprised to find each other here, on this blanket, in the middle of the floor of their world. Helena stands up – so she can wash her hands, so she can turn her back to Sarah. She turns on the sink. She runs the hot water. “Will you stop visiting me,” she says, “now that you do not have a test to run away from?”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah says. “Christ, meathead, did you think – _no_. I’m sorry, I haven’t been making enough time for you. I just…I’m not used to having this many people that I – just, a lot to juggle. And I thought I was already bugging you enough.”

“You never have too many bugs for me, _sestra_.” Helena dries her hands, sits down again next to Sarah, listens to the huff of air as Sarah laughs despite herself.

“Sure,” Sarah says. Her voice is light, but there’s a wrinkle in her forehead when she looks at Helena. “Was that bothering you?”

“No,” Helena says, and means it. “Just wondering.”

She could say: _you can run away from things whenever you want, with me, and I won’t judge you for it._ She doesn’t say that either. She watches Donnie and Arthur watch her and watch Sarah with absolutely no idea who either of them are. Arthur blows a spit bubble. Helena blows a spit bubble back.

“They’re gonna be alright, y’know,” Sarah says. “No one’s gonna send them anywhere. Or – or separate them, or anything. You know.”

“I know,” Helena says. “I know _sestra_ Alison will watch them well. She knows how to do this. She and Donnie watch them sometimes, when I have much need of sleep. The babies will not disappear. I know all of these things.”

Sarah reaches out and touches one little baby foot. “But also,” she says, “you don’t know any of that.”

Helena pulls her lips between her teeth. She nods.

“I guess,” Sarah says, “I…I don’t know, I’m shit at advice, but I guess you’re never gonna know if you can trust your family unless you start trusting your family. If that makes any sense.”

“I trust you,” Helena says.

Sarah snorts. “You’ve left me alone with your kids for _maybe_ ten minutes since you popped ‘em out. Look, I get it. I wouldn’t’ve left me with Kira either. Not when she was little. But I did leave her with…”

She frowns and goes away. Not her body – her body is still there – but her face gets all dark and hollow in that way Helena hates looking at. She can’t bear the idea that Sarah is carrying all that feeling alone.

She picks up Arthur and puts him in Sarah’s arms; Sarah catches him, instantly shifts him so she’s holding him the right way. She blinks at him like she’s surprised that he’s there – but she’s looking at him, and she’s back inside of herself. “S would’ve loved you,” she tells him, and he rolls his eyes all around and bangs out his little limbs at odd angles.

“That means _I love you,_ titka _Sarah_ ,” Helena says.

“I’m no Siobhan,” Sarah says, and then closes her eyes very tightly. Opens her eyes again. “But my point, my point’s just – I don’t know what my point is. You’ve got all sorts of amazing people who want to help you ‘cause they love you and they’d love to look after your kids for you so I can get you some bloody sun and you can eat a bunch of disgusting shit all smashed together. Alright?”

“Okay, Sarah,” Helena says. She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Let’s have lunch.”

“Ha.”

“But not now,” Helena says, “because you have a leaf donut to eat.”

“Bought that for you, meathead.”

“You have not eaten breakfast. Or lunch. I can tell. Eat the donut.”

“Nope,” Sarah says. She stands up, grabs the bag, throws it at Helena’s head – Helena catches it – Sarah smirks. “Eat up,” she says. “You’re a new mother and you’re tired, all of that shite.”

Helena reaches into the rustling bag and breaks the donut in half. She holds half of it out to Sarah; the other half she crams into her mouth all at once. Leaves and sugar. Dough and milk and a little bit of salt.

Sarah swipes the other half of the donut from Helena’s hand and takes a bite. Makes a face. Takes another bite, and then another.

“I was hungry,” she says, finally.

“I know,” Helena says. She sticks her tongue out at Arthur and Donnie and they blink at her and then laugh, almost but not quite exactly the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should specify that the leaf is a basil leaf. It isn't just a random leaf. You know the kind of donut shop that just puts a wholeass basil leaf on a donut? Like [this](https://media.timeout.com/images/101727157/630/472/image.jpg)? That's the vibe here. But to Helena a leaf is a leaf!


	5. Chapter 5

The menu at this diner has not changed at all in the four times they’ve been here, and yet each time Helena encounters it she reacts like she has been led into some cavern of forbidden treasures. It’s endearing, which Sarah isn’t ever going to tell her.

“They have five kinds of pancakes,” Helena announces. “One with chocolate chips. _This_ I like. Chocolate cake for breakfast.”

“Meathead, it’s noon.”

“Breakfast.”

Sarah rolls her eyes and scopes out the rest of the diner: the old people slurping down oatmeal and cottage cheese in their booths, the waitress’ plastic expressions. All exactly the same. At some point Helena’s going to say _let’s have lunch_ and Sarah’s going to say _yeah, sure_ and take her to a bloody pub or something. Helena’s puppy dog eyes can’t trap her here forever.

The waitress drops tea off at the table and Sarah pushes all the sugar packets over to Helena’s side. She pours her own cup, dumps half of it down her throat at once. It burns like shit.

“How is the packing,” Helena says; she isn’t looking at Sarah, just methodically dumping packet after packet of sugar into her cup.

“A lot of shit,” Sarah says. “Tons. Christ. Don’t even know what to do with the bloody hunting rifles.”

“Hm,” Helena says. “Not so useful. Hunting animals, use a bow. Hunting people, use a Barrett Em-eight-two. Hunting rifles are easy. Put them in the garbage.”

“Cheers.”

A smile wrinkles up the corner of Helena’s mouth. “You asked.”

Sarah laughs a little, despite herself. Her shoulders lower a tick. “Knew the lunch date was a good idea,” she says. “At least I’ve got some idea of where to start now.”

“Missus S used Ruger also. Bad pistol. Long reset.” Helena picks up her mug with both hands and takes a long, gross slurp. “You see pistols, throw them away.”

Sarah’s hands jolt on her mug, like they’ve gotten an electric shock and haven’t told the rest of her. “Ha,” she says. The word comes out choked.

Helena lowers her mug, brow wriggling as she tries to figure out – and then abruptly straightening when she solves it, the puzzle of Sarah’s terrible moods and general shittiness. “Oh,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Wasn’t your fault. Maybe if her pistol hadn’t been so shitty, yeah?”

The words come out too bitter; Helena shrinks into herself. Her shoulders are hunched. Her face is an open wound, because Sarah is too good at making other people look like wounds. She downs another shot of her tea before remembering, again, that the tea in this diner tastes like shit.

“Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t mean to spoil lunch.”

“I—” Helena says, and then the waitress swings by to take their orders: Sarah’s sandwich, Helena’s eighteen plates of clogged arteries. By the time the waitress leaves, Helena’s face has unknotted itself and tied itself into something completely different. She looks very solemn.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t,” Sarah says, “it’s not your fault. I—”

Helena leans across the table and lightly raps Sarah’s nose with two fingers, like she’s trying to stop a cat from climbing onto a dinner table.

“ _Ow_ , meathead. What the hell?”

“Not your fault either,” Helena says, settling back to her seat. “You were going away again. Stay here.”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?”

“You go there a lot,” Helena says. “I don’t know where it is. I can’t go with you when you go there. Stay here, have lunch.”

“Don’t slap me again and I might,” Sarah says. “Kidding! I’m kidding, you didn’t hurt me, I’m fine. Don’t freak out.” Helena, who had been straightening up in her seat, relaxes back down. The bags under her eyes are a little smaller then they have been. That’s nice to see.

“How are you, anyway?” Sarah says. “How’s your week been?”

“Good,” Helena says. “Quiet.”

“Yeah? You sure?”

Helena shrugs slightly. “I’m tired,” she says.

“Yeah, you look it. Ask Alison to babysit more, yeah?”

The food clatters down onto the table; Sarah takes apart her sandwich to give her hands something to do. She watches Helena slowly wrap a pancake around a chicken-fried steak, pick it up in both hands, and eat it.

“Helena,” Sarah says. “You wanna tell me what’s up? You’re eating at my speed, so _something’s_ wrong.”

“Whomf,” Helena says eloquently through a mouthful of improvised steak sandwich. She swallows. “I’m just tired,” she says. “I need more sleep. I need _sestra_ Alison to watch my babies some more, I think.”

“You don’t sound excited about it.”

Helena scrunches her face up. “Don’t tell her?” she says.

“I won’t,” Sarah says. “Promise.”

Helena lets out a long, low sigh and smears both hands down her face; a line of grease shimmers on her cheekbones like discount highlighter. “I,” she says. “Hm. I…” She picks up another bite of pancake-chickensteak. Chews. Swallows. “I…”

“When I let Alison watch them,” she says, “the babies, sometimes I think… _maybe this time she will not give them back_. And then I think, this is good. She should keep them. Alison is a good mother and Alison wanted the babies and Alison didn’t want me so maybe it would be better if I left, again, and they could be her babies. And then I would no longer cause problems, for her, and for my babies. I don’t know. I don’t know.” She looks down at the table; her eyes skip over the food like it isn’t even there.

“Helena,” Sarah says. “ _Helena_. Babes.”

“Am I bad because I want to stay?” Helena says. “Am I selfish?”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah says; she shoves herself to the front of her seat in the booth, reaches out and grabs Helena’s greasy hands. “No,” she says. “You’ve fought for those kids since the moment they started growing in you, yeah? You love them so much. You’re a great mum.”

“I am a great fighter,” Helena says. “I fought and fought and fought. For them. But now there is nothing to fight. No more Neos. There is only lunchboxes and English spelling and playgrounds and tooth-brushing and buying little shoes and I don’t understand any of these things. I am trying, I…I don’t know. I’m scared, Sarah. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

Fuck, S would know exactly what to say here. S probably _did_ know exactly what to say here, because god knows Sarah had this kind of meltdown with Siobhan a thousand times.

 _I wasn’t made for this_ , Sarah would say. _I wasn’t made for it_. And what the hell did S say? Sarah sitting across the dinner table from her, hair a mess, face all rumpled, eyes all teary. What did Siobhan say when she looked at that?

“It’s all fighting,” Sarah says. “Being a mum. There’s so much fighting in it. You’re fighting _them_ to, I dunno, get them to eat their bloody vegetables instead of rotting their bloody teeth out. You’re fighting with the school when the school won’t listen to what your kid needs. You’re fighting other parents – _not_ literally, meathead, Alison’d skin you – and you’re fighting against the whole bloody world because there’s a lot of shit out there that wants to stop your kids from growing up and being happy. And yeah, Alison’s good at Tupperware and shite, but your babies need someone who’s gonna be in their corner scratching and kicking at the world to get it to treat them okay.

“And that’s _you_ , Helena. You love like nobody I’ve ever seen. They’re lucky to have you. They’re so – they’re _so_ lucky. And if you even think about skipping town I’ll just come after you and drag you back here, ‘cause I’m the best there is at running away from shit and there’s no bloody way you could hide from me. Alright?”

That isn’t what S would’ve said.

She would have sighed, first off. She would have looked at Sarah with that patented Siobhan mix of love and disappointment, and when Sarah said _I wasn’t made for this_ she would have said _you weren’t made for anything, chicken. You’re remaking yourself all the time._

 _I’m trying_ , Sarah tells her now. _I wasn’t made for this but I’m learning how to be. I’m making myself right for it._ She feels Siobhan’s smile and it hurts, it hurts, and she reaches out a hand and wipes the tears and grease from Helena’s face.

“You’re gonna cry frying oil at this rate, meathead,” she whispers.

Helena sucks up a load of snot. “You wouldn’t catch me,” she mumbles. “I am very good at hiding.”

“I’d know where you were, though,” Sarah says. “I’d know.”

“Would you?” Helena says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Promise.”

“Ha,” Helena says. She squeezes Sarah’s hands. “I don’t like this,” she says. “It is bad when I am alone with my sons and it is bad when other people are helping me. Very confusing.”

Sarah squeezes back. “Yeah,” she says. “Believe me, I get it.”

“I know you do,” Helena says. “I should tell you things more, I think.” She squeezes Sarah’s hands and then releases them, picks up a piece of cake and takes a bite out of it. “Sarah?” she says, only it comes out _hurr?_

“Yeah?”

“Does it get easier?”

“If it ever does, I’ll tell you.”

“Next lunch date.”

“Sure, meathead, I’ll figure it all out for you by next Thursday.”

Helena snorts. Cake audibly goes down the wrong passage and she makes some truly disgusting noises before swallowing it.

“Now eat your garbage,” Sarah says.

“Not garbage,” Helena says. “You love it here.”

“It sucks.”

“You love it,” Helena says, sounding utterly convinced. She dips the cake in a small container of dressing and continues eating it. Her face is still all red, but she seems dedicated to ignoring that so Sarah does her a favor and ignores it too. She puts her sandwich back together and takes a bite, then another one. She drinks her shitty tea. They keep on eating until all the food is gone.


	6. Chapter 6

Sarah’s bathroom is covered in garbage: makeup, toothpaste in tubes, toothpaste out of tubes, towels. Helena feels very safe there. It’s nice – that she feels safe there – because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to sit here on the lid of the toilet and turn the scissors over and over and over in her hands.

“I don’t have an apron or anythin’,” Sarah yells from the other room. “You want a trash bag? I’m gonna cut a hole in a trash bag.” There’s some banging, and then a _shit_ , and then Sarah comes back into the bathroom. Her hair is up in a messy bun at the back of her neck, and she’s holding a trash bag.

“Thank you for the fashion, _sestra_ ,” Helena says.

“Anything for you,” Sarah says. “Gimme the scissors ‘n let me pull this over your head.”

Helena bites down on her lip, chews it a little, gives Sarah the scissors. Sarah pops the trash bag over Helena’s head – quick but not rough, her hands tender as she makes sure Helena is not caught in the plastic.

Helena blinks at herself in the mirror: a haystack of sopping wet blonde and brown hair and the lumpy shape of a trash bag. She sticks her tongue out at herself.

“You sure?” Sarah says.

“Yes.”

“I mean, it grows back,” Sarah says. “But I thought I’d ask.”

“Yes I am sure. Please cut my hairs.”

“Alright,” Sarah says. She furrows her eyebrows; her face takes on that expression of fierce concentration that kicks at some relief in Helena’s heart – _Sarah’s going to fix it, Sarah’s going to beat the world into the right shape, it’s okay now. It’s okay._ Convinced, Helena closes her eyes. The world goes black.

“Well,” Sarah mutters to herself. Then there is the silvery sound of scissor blades cutting through hair – and another sound, and another. Helena’s shoulders lower. She can feel long chunks of hair falling on her, landing cold and wet and sweet as snow.

“This isn’t gonna be pretty,” Sarah says. “If you wanted pretty you should’ve asked Alison.”

“I asked you,” Helena says.

“I know,” Sarah says. “Just making sure, just making sure.” Snip snip. “I never fully buzzed my head, actually. Had an undercut in, dunno, early twenties? Pain in the arse to keep that up. Girls liked it though.”

“What is undercut.”

“Uh. You buzz your hair but not all of it, so there’s – like – a flop on top? I dunno, meathead, I’ll find pictures for you. I’ve got loads of S’ old photo albums. I look shitty in them, you can laugh.”

“I won’t laugh.”

“You say that, but you haven’t seen the pictures.”

Snip, snip, snip.

“I have no hair stories,” Helena says.

“You will after this, eh?”

“I will have a story that says, _I asked my_ sestra _to cut my hair in her bathroom, and she did. She cut it all off. And then my_ sestra _Alison’s head exploded and she died. It was very sad._ ”

“He _le_ na!” Alison says through Sarah’s mouth. It’s a good impression: Sarah gets the horrified squeak in the middle, the disappointed dip at the end. Helena snorts. Snorts again. And then once she’s started laughing she can’t stop – the scissors swerve away from Helena’s head and Helena doubles over, chuckling and hiccuping and biting her lip to try and keep it in.

“It wasn’t that funny, meathead.” Sarah’s voice is straining at the edges with her own laughter. “You can’t laugh at every joke, I’ll get a big head about it.”

“More hairs to cut,” Helena wheezes. “Big head. More hairs.”

“Goofus.” Then Alison says: “Helena, this is very serious! My head is going to explode!” and Helena is gone, completely gone, far away on a rocket ship propeled by her own laughter. She bangs her hands against her knees; hair goes flying from Helena’s trash bag all over Sarah’s bathroom, where it will tangle up with Sarah’s hairs and Kira’s hairs and live there forever. Alison would hate that too. Helena fills the room up with laughter and then she hears Sarah laughing too – low, helpless, loving. She thinks: _this is good_. And it is, it is good.

“ _Please_ stop laughing,” Sarah says through her chuckling. “Helena. Come on, I’ve cut, like, a quarter of your hair. You look insane – Helena—” and she’s off again. They both go away to the land of laughter, which is a very nice place to visit. Especially when you have your sister.

“Oh,” Helena says eventually. “Ooooooh.” She blinks her eyes open. The world is blurry with tears, so she blinks a few more times until it turns back into Sarah’s bathroom. Helena in the mirror looks so stupid that both of them – the Helena in the mirror, the Helena out of the mirror – start laughing again. They bite their lips in sync to keep the laughter in.

“Sarah,” Helena says. “Stand up. Was not that funny.”

Sarah raises two fingers at her from the bathroom floor.

“Very true,” Helena says. “ _Was_ that funny.”

“You’re a menace,” Sarah says, and rubs her sleeve under her eyes to catch the old makeup and tears there. “Ah, god. Cheers. Haven’t gotten to bring that voice out in ages.”

“Much sorries. I will tell Alison that you should be her more.”

“ _No_ no no. That’s not the takeaway here, meathead. Alison couldn’t pay me enough.” Sarah stands up, tucks loose strands of hair behind her ears and brandishes the scissors again. “Alright. Serious business. I’m cuttin’ it off.”

“All of it,” Helena says.

“I know,” Sarah says. Snip snip. “All of it, you got it.”

Snip snip snip snip snip. Helena’s head gets lighter and lighter, like a balloon she is starting to let go of. She closes her eyes again and feels it all go away.

Sarah didn’t ask her why she wanted to cut all of her hair off; she’d just looked at Helena for a second, shrugged, said _yeah, sure, I cut Fe’s once. He hated it_. And then it was happening.

She loves Sarah so much for not asking questions.

She loves Sarah so much for a million reasons – because she didn’t ask, because she got Helena a trash bag from under her sink, because she made sure that trash bag didn’t pinch. She loves the song Sarah is humming under her breath, even though she doesn’t know what song it is or if it has words at all. She loves Sarah’s messy bathroom and the old clippers Sarah had found way back under her sink. She doesn’t know how to say any of these things out loud, but they’re all true.

“Alright,” Sarah says eventually. “I’m getting the razor. _Don’t_ move.”

And those words, in a different time, with a different meaning—

Helena’s eyes open. She meets her own gaze in the mirror. The woman there is a stranger, pink-faced, freckled, her hair so short and so brown. She crosses her eyes at Helena and doesn’t move one inch as Sarah turns on the buzzing clippers and begins shaving Helena’s hair down to the scalp. Buzz buzz. The brush of Sarah’s fingers over Helena’s scalp and that frown, again, the one that says _I’m going to fix the whole world for you_.

Buzz buzz buzz and then silence. Sarah steps back, dusts a palm over Helena’s head. “There you go,” she says. “Looks cute. That’s just you, though, that’s not my haircutting skills or anythin’.”

Helena’s mirror self looks at her, expectantly, and her mirror self does too. Helena smiles at both of them. “You did good,” she tells them. She means it.


	7. Chapter 7

The couch thuds down into the middle of the bare wood floor and Sarah thuds down besides it. “Christ,” she says. “How much more shit?”

“Seven,” Helena says, dropping down next to her. “Seven more shits.”

“Bloody hell.” She leans back on her hands and takes in the apartment: the blank walls, the bare floor. It’s a little bit scuffed from whatever couch was here before, which somehow makes her feel better.

“Why’m I doing this again?” she asks. Half joking.

Helena shrugs a shoulder. “Bad memories,” she says. “Big empty house. You do not like cleaning stairs.”

“Nobody likes cleaning stairs,” Sarah mutters. She combs her fingers through her hair. “And Kira—”

“—took all of Alison’s old crafting things to make a room with. She says, come and visit. This new place, it makes her happy.” Helena tilts her head a little bit. “It makes you happy too.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah says.

“Yes you do.”

“Shut up, I hate it when you’re wise at me. Let me sulk.”

Helena blows a raspberry at her, spreads her arms and legs across the floor like she’s making a snow angel. Sarah can’t lie down with her anymore – she stands up, paces back and forth across the empty room. So many boxes. So much empty space. She keeps thinking about – she keeps thinking about it, the space, the corner for Kira’s desk and the walls for hanging new pictures and new art and the weird lumpy tapestry Cosima gave her as a housewarming gift and the kitchen with enough counter space to make a loaf of bread instead of banging away at it at the dining table and the idea of a space that’s hers, finally, hers and Kira’s. A place for growing up in.

“Are you done sulking,” Helena says.

“Yeah.” Sarah’s voice is rusty, but just a little. “This is crazy, yeah?”

“Not crazy,” Helena says quietly. “Only new.” She stands up and paces around, windmilling her arms into the empty space. “Much bigger than garage.”

“Well, hey, you can come hang here whenever. Just let me know when you’re bringing the boys so I can move all the breakable shit.”

“You think,” Helena says. “You think if you put it up high that they will not reach it, but they will find a way to get it. And bite it.”

“Having fun with teething?”

Helena snaps her jaws at empty air a few times, which could mean absolutely anything.

“I’m excited,” Sarah tells her. “For this. I mean, it’s gonna be a bloody nightmare, paying for it, but – I dunno. I’ve got work, I can – I’m – Christ, I don’t know. Let’s go get the mattress.”

Helena steps closer and grabs Sarah’s face in her hands. Sarah’s cheeks squish; Helena shakes Sarah’s head a little bit, and then paps both of her palms against Sarah’s face and lets go. “This is good for you,” she says. “I like it. And if you need money, I will rob bank.”

A snort rips itself out of Sarah’s throat. “ _No_ ,” she says.

“But! Maybe.”

“ _No_ , Helena, no bank robbing. Christ.”

“I can’t hear you,” Helena calls over her shoulder, leaving the apartment and bounding away like a coward. Sarah rubs her eyes with one hand and tells herself that Helena’s joking. She can’t quite believe herself – the image is too real, Helena in one of those stupid domino masks grabbing a suitcase full of cash and driving away on a motorcycle. She knows Helena would do it if Sarah asked her to.

She kicks the door open and follows Helena outside; Helena is frowning at the mattress like she’s going to enact terrible vengeance on it. “God,” Sarah says, “I wish Art hadn’t been busy.”

“Arthur is strong,” Helena says. “But not that strong. You are weak, but this is fine. I am _very_ strong. You take the bottom end.”

Sarah takes the bottom end, and they count: one – two – three – lift, and they carry the mattress inside all the way to the room Kira has already claimed. Sarah would have given it to her anyway – it has the best light, it’s got the most space. It’s a good room. It’s got good bones. She thinks of Kira being happy here and it makes her so happy she could die.

“When is the pizza,” Helena says.

“Once we’re done, I told you, it’s part of the whole thing.”

“We should have pizza first. For energy.”

“Piss off, you’d just nap.”

“Eh,” Helena says, in a way that means _absolutely_. She’s already headed back out to grab another box. So many boxes. It’s sort of nice, to have a life that takes this many boxes to hold.

Sarah follows her and then they’re counting down the trips, Helena’s seven pieces of shit – the desk, the box of records (“ _careful_ with that one, Helena”) and the box of books, the microwave and the kettle and the big standing lamp, the box labeled KITCHEN SHIT, three chairs (“how the hell are you carrying all of – I’m not gonna ask”), an armchair, and the second mattress. They collapse onto that mattress once they’re done, Helena’s head warm and sweaty where it’s nudged against Sarah’s head.

“Pizza,” Helena says.

“Phone’s in the other room, you get it.”

Helena rolls over and mashes her face into the mattress. She groans distantly.

Sarah yawns in response; she stretches her arms over her head, watching the dust motes whirl around. She’s contemplating falling asleep when she hears a key jingling in the lock, Kira’s voice saying “Moooom?”

“In here, monkey,” Sarah yells.

“Bring Sarah’s phone,” Helena yells.

Several sets of footsteps enter the apartment, and then Kira’s head pokes around the doorframe. “Hi,” she says. “Auntie Alison brought lasagna. And sage?”

“Christ,” Sarah says, at the same time Helena says “ _Lasagna_ ” in a tone of worshipful reverence. Sarah loses her – Helena bounces off the mattress, leans down to give Kira a big hug (“Aunt Helena, you’re _sweaty_ , stooooop”) and a dramatic kiss on the forehead, and makes a direct beeline out towards the promise of lasagna. Sarah watches her leave and pats the space where Helena was next to her.

“You wanna come lie down?” she says. “I’m just as sweaty as she is, you can get _real_ gross.”

“ _No_ ,” Kira says, giggling a little. “I can’t believe you guys moved all this stuff yourself.”

“ _I_ can’t believe Auntie Alison got here right after we finished. Almost like she timed it, hey?”

“I’m gonna go get lasagna,” Kira says quickly, and ducks back outside. Sarah lies there, sweating onto her bare mattress, hearing the scuffle of paper plates and the confused sounds of Donnie trying to figure out where to plug in the microwave. One of the boys is making disgruntled clucking sounds. God, she should get up; she should make sure Alison doesn’t burn any bloody sage in Sarah’s brand new apartment.

Footsteps on the floorboards; Helena rounds the corner, holding one of her sons. He’s gumming contentedly at her hand, which she seems happy to ignore.

“Hurry up,” she says. “Lasagna. And then pizza.”

Sarah laughs. “We don’t need both.”

“Hm,” Helena says, bouncing the baby on her hip. “Maybe. We will see. After lasagna.”

“After lasagna,” Sarah says. She stands up; her hips and knees and back all crack, and she rubs at her spine as she goes to join Helena. Helena bumps her hip against Sarah’s, smiles, and follows her out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

“This test,” Helena says, “is bullshit.”

“It really is,” Sarah says from the kitchen. “What part are you on?”

“Lit-er-a-cy.” Helena drops the practice test on the floor and rolls over on Sarah’s couch so she can watch her sister in the kitchen – she’s punching a lump of dough like it’s somebody she hates. Not somebody she hates enough to kill. But somebody she hates enough to punch many times while frowning.

“Screw literacy,” Sarah says. “It _is_ bullshit. And all the example passages suck. You should be able to talk your way out of that, honestly. English isn’t even your first language.”

“Even in Ukrainian,” Helena says. She rolls on her back and looks up at the ceiling. In the upper left corner of the ceiling is her favorite crack: the one that looks like one long, twisted strand of hair. Her second favorite crack is the one that _sestra_ Cosima says will “totally come out” and that Sarah “doesn’t even have to worry about, seriously,” but seeing that one would mean moving off the couch. And she isn’t going to do that.

Thud thud thud against the bread.

“I don’t understand,” Helena says. “Any of it.”

The thudding stops. Sarah’s footsteps creak across the floorboards, and Sarah – covered in flour and itty bitty pieces of raw dough, on her knuckles and cheekbones and forehead – looms over the couch. “Trust me,” she says. “You’re smart. If they let me through, they’re definitely gonna let you through.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get through.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

Helena covers her face with her hands. Distantly, Arthur says: _a-ba_. She agrees. _A-ba_.

“Move,” Sarah says, and kicks Helena’s legs out of the way so she can squish onto the couch. “Really, it’s gonna be fine. If you totally screw up your GED then you can take it again later or something. Or you can join Alison’s online soap racket.”

“I don’t understand that either.”

“People go crazy for soap, I guess.”

“Tastes bad.”

Silence. Then: “God, I hope you’re joking.” Helena lifts one hand off her face to see the way that Sarah is smiling at her, small and secret and fond, like she doesn’t really mind whether or not Helena is joking. Which is good, because Helena wasn’t joking.

“I don’t know what I want,” Helena says, and then she covers her face with hands again.

She hears a sigh from Sarah, long and low. “I gotta get that thing rising,” she says. “Then I’m gonna go get a beer. You want a beer?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Figured. Hold on.” Sarah pats Helena’s foot and then stands up and rummages around in the kitchen. Helena watches the ceiling and squints so that the world blurs; she imagines that those words, _I don’t know what I want_ , are a black squiggly crack on the ceiling. She imagines rolling those words back up and swallowing them again. She knows just how they’ll prickle their way back down her throat – she’s swallowed them enough by now to remember how they taste.

Sarah puts the bread in a big glass bowl and opens the refrigerator. She grabs two beers. She knocks one open against the counter, and uses a bottle opener with the other. Helena doesn’t need to see any of this; the sounds of it are enough to make it all real. Thud, crinkle, thud. Creak. Creak creak creak creak.

She lifts one hand off her face and holds it out for the beer; it nestles itself, cold and smooth, into the curve of her hand. Helena drags herself up to sitting and takes a sip. Her eyes go to the boys – half asleep in their playpen, halfheartedly chewing a teddy bear to death. She waves at Arthur. He stares in her general direction, and then goes back to chewing.

“Me either, by the way,” Sarah says. She holds out her bottle and they clink the bottles’ necks together. “I’m just making it up as I go.” She takes a pull of her beer and then turns the bottle around in her hands absentmindedly. “Neos’d be easier, hey?”

Helena makes a finger gun and fires it. _Pew_. The corner of Sarah’s mouth pulls up crooked and she drinks more of her beer. “It’s just…step by step,” she says. “Taking the test, that’s one step. And then if there’s more steps after that we’ll figure all that shit out later.”

“I,” Helena says. “I don’t want them to grow up in a garage.”

“Then we’ll figure it out,” Sarah says. “Though, hey, it’s a nice garage. Alison and Donnie really—”

“There is no toilet.”

Sarah takes a few more gulps of her beer. “Alright,” she says distantly. “That’s fair.”

“I can’t take them for walks,” Helena says, “unless I wear a wig. I can’t throw away garbage in the big cans. I can’t buy food. I can’t be in the house sometimes, in case _sestra_ Alison has friends or if Donnie is watching Big Game With The Guys. I want my _syny_ to run around outside and be terrible monsters.” She scratches at the label of the beer with her fingernails. “No more cages.”

“And if I have to take the test,” she says, “fine. If I clean up other shits for money, also fine. If I need to rob a bank, fine.”

“Helena,” Sarah says, “we all messed up somewhere if your go-to is robbing a bank. Seriously. Stop offering that up as an answer, yeah?”

“I was making speech. Why are you interrupting.”

“No, no, go ahead. Sorry.”

“Now I don’t remember.” Helena thuds her head against the back of the couch. She blinks up at the ceiling. “Maybe,” she says, “I should have _sestra_ Alison make the fake papers so I can be scientist.”

“Maybe,” Sarah says. “Like I said, we’ll figure it out. If that’s your next step then I’m behind you, got it? I’m just not robbin’ a bloody bank for you, Helena. That’s it, that’s my limit.”

“Terrible sister.” Helena shifts her weight so she can thunk her head down onto Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah smells like flour and sweat and dirt. She smells very real.

“When you ace this thing, I’ll buy you ice cream.” Sarah leans her head against Helena’s head.

“And what if I fail?”

“Then I’ll buy you shots. Time honored tradition in our house. Though Felix ‘n I usually just snuck some from S’ bottles downstairs. I’m gonna take you to a proper bar.”

“That sounds more fun than ice cream.”

“That’s why I’m not a bloody tutor, yeah?” Sarah says. “Hey. It’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Helena says. “Can we sit here anyways.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, so Helena closes her eyes. Flour, dirt, sweat, dust. The sound of Sarah’s upstairs neighbors wandering around their apartment. The rise-fall of Sarah’s breathing.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, and she barely remembers her dreams (something about English letters stabbing her with knives), but she remembers waking up: the warmed-up glass of the beer bottle against her leg, the jut of Sarah’s bony elbow into her ribcage. Sarah’s breathing, still: in and out and in again. Sarah hasn’t shifted at all, hasn’t gotten up and left her here. Helena exhales slowly and then lets herself fall back asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

The music at the bar is deafening, and the lights are glitching through every color of the rainbow as fast as they can, and beautiful people are everywhere. None of this is enough to make Sarah stop thinking about Helena’s pickleback shot, as much as she’d like to – and she’d really like to.

“Are you done?” she yells over the thumping of the bass and the breathy autotuned chorus. She looks at Helena just in time to catch Helena downing the shot of pickle juice and screwing her face up in what’s either horror or delight. Helena meets her eyes and grins; her teeth are sharp and white and probably pickle-scented.

“You’re disgusting,” Sarah says. “Truly disgusting.”

“It tastes good!” Helena says. She’s still beaming. “I will get another one, try it.”

“No.”

“Pleeease.”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah says. “Now come on, come dance with me.” She grabs Helena by the wrist and drags her away from the pickle juice, out into the crush of bodies: people of every gender, clashing into each other, jittering with nerves and excitement and horniness. She judiciously applies a few elbows to get Helena into the real thick of it.

“I know how to _dance_ ,” Helena says, and immediately launches into a routine that makes her look like a hose on full blast ricocheting around someone’s yard. There’s a lot of wiggling. Sarah ducks around the wiggling and dances in spite of it; for a minute or two she forgets who she is, which is the best feeling to get on a dancefloor. She used to spend hours out here, dancing and dancing and dancing until she passed out. Better than anything else.

It’s weird now. Not bad weird, but it’s weird – the idea that after this she has to grab her sister (her _sister_ ) and they’ll get into a car and go to Sarah’s apartment (her _apartment_ ) and try not to wake up Kira and chug too much water and fall asleep in the bed that Sarah bought, for herself, with money from her job. It’s all surreal. This could be the same dancefloor from five years ago, or ten years ago; she could bump into her fifteen year old self here, raccoon eyes in a face aching for bruises, and her fifteen year old self wouldn’t believe any of this shit. Explaining the clones would be the easy part.

Instead of teenage Sarah, though, it’s Helena – jumping up and down and swinging her head around with seemingly no shits given about who she bangs into. _Wow_ , Sarah thinks, _she’s gonna get in trouble_ , and just as that thought settles a man yells: “Hey!” and shoves Helena into the mess of the crowd.

“What the hell!” Sarah yells. “Piss off, bastard, what’d you do that for!”

Helena’s already up, though, bouncing off the people like they’re rubber before nonchalantly swinging forward and crashing her skull directly into the guy’s nose. Blood spurts like a fountain; one girl shrieks as a few warm drops splatter onto her dress.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Shit.” She’s trying not to laugh. Helena blinks, dazed, and then looks at Sarah: _was that cool?_

Sober Sarah would say _no, probably not_. Drunk Sarah hasn’t punched a man in a really long time and she’s honestly sort of hoping this man will get back up and make a real show of it. _Just keep dancing_ , she mouths to Helena, and Helena shrugs and continues her arrythmic bouncing. The crowd has wisely moved back a step from Helena, so she’s mostly uninterrupted—

The guy from before crashes into her sideways. His face is a mess, but he seems pissed off enough to keep going despite that. His fists are clenched and swinging. The crowd buzzes away, scattering to the corners of the room, and they’re in that weird cleared-out space that happens sometimes when fights get bad – the _oh shit I don’t want security called on me_ bubble. Helena ducks under a punch, hops to the left a little bit to avoid an elbow. It’s honestly better than her dancing was before.

“Hey!” Sarah yells, and when he turns to look at her she punches him in his busted nose. He goes down again. Helena makes eye contact over his lowered body, grins, and hops on his back like a completely demented monkey.

“What the hell is going on!” the man roars, words gone rounded and nasal from his own blood.

“You hit my sister, twat,” Sarah yells, and stomps on his foot.

Two against one isn’t ever remotely even, and when the team is an ex-con and a literal assassin it’s just brutally unfair. The asshole doesn’t seem to get this, so he keeps optimistically fighting back for _way_ too long before a bouncer’s on Sarah and a bouncer’s on the mash of Helena and her bloody victim and then they’re all just sort of ushered outside, into the cold. Helena hops off his back, tongue licking at her incisors, eyes wild. She raises her fists up hopefully.

“You’re both _insane_ ,” he says. “You’re completely fucking insane.” He trips over his feet in his urge to stumble backwards away from them. Helena darts forward like an attack dog – Sarah grabs her upper arm, shakes her head. _Not worth it_. He moves back a step, another, and then tumbles off into the night.

“Nice,” Sarah says.

“I thought he would stay and fight,” Helena says, sounding deeply disappointed. “No fun.”

“You were fantastic, though! Holy shit, we need to go drinking more.”

Helena gives her a sloppy salute. “I will…I will fail more tests. For you. _Sestra_. More, ah, _svyatkovyy napoyi_. It’s cold.”

“It’s freezing,” Sarah says. She unties her jacket from around her waist and shrugs it on, fumbles in her pocket for her phone. “You want another drink?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Helena says.

“Hold, hold on, I don’t know what places haven’t already kicked me out. Shit.” She turns on her phone with numb fingers: 2:17am. “ _Shit_.”

“What,” Helena says. Her cold chin lands on Sarah’s shoulder. “Ah. Shit.”

“Never mind,” Sarah says, “I’m gonna call a…” she fumbles for her passcode, unlocks her phone. “What the hell’s my bloody address?”

“I don’t know,” Helena says, burying her face into Sarah’s shoulder. “Good nights.”

“Your nose is _freezing_ , get off,” Sarah says, jumping her shoulder up and down to try and get Helena to dislodge. (It doesn’t work.) “I’m gonna have to call Cos, huh. Shite.”

“No,” Helena says. “No, no. It is.” And she lifts her face from Sarah’s shoulder and rattles off the address, digit perfect.

“Cheers.” Sarah types it in, calls someone to pick them up. Four minutes away; she is suddenly too tired to stand, so she sits down on the curb. Helena comes down with her. Sarah opens up her jacket and Helena huddles in it, her stupid ice cold chin on Sarah’s bare neck.

“I like drinking,” Helena says. “I like the pickle shot.”

“Don’t,” Sarah says, “god, I’d almost forgotten about the pickle shot. That shit’s gross.”

Helena burps pickle breath into Sarah’s face.

“Ew!” Sarah says. “God, you – get out of my jacket, I’m never – _Helena_ —” but then she’s laughing too hard to finish the sentence, or remember what it was supposed to be in the first place. Helena stubbornly scoots even closer to Sarah, clinging to the jacket like it’s a lifeline.

“You have blood on your hands,” Helena mutters, burying her face into her shirt.

“You’ve got blood on your – yeah,” Sarah says. “We’ve gotta do this again. I want to scare the shit out of someone.”

“Easy,” Helena says drowsily. “You get a knife.”

“I’ve _got_ a knife.”

“Very good beginning. I have four.”

“ _Where_ ,” Sarah says, then: “never mind, I don’t want to know.” Helena chuckles darkly to herself in their makeshift curbside shelter. Sarah checks her phone: two minutes away.

“I want a burger,” she says. “I’m gonna tell ‘im to take us by a burger place. Alright?”

“Yes,” Helena says. “Always yes. Extra mustard.”

“I could eat a horse,” Sarah says. She jumps her legs up and down and squints at the road, watching distant headlights pass in the dark. Behind them, the club is still distantly thudding away; people wander vaguely in and out, probably just as trashed as the two of them.

Helena nudges her. “Look,” she says, so Sarah looks – there’s a few drops of blood in the street, where the guy ran away. It’s the funniest thing Sarah’s ever seen, so she lifts up her phone and takes a picture so she can’t ever forget it.


	10. Chapter 10

Every time they have lunch at the diner Sarah says _I hate it here, let’s never go back_ , but whenever she picks up Helena for lunch she always takes Helena directly to the diner. And that is love. Helena figured that out a long time ago, even if Sarah hasn’t realized it yet.

Also love: that Sarah lets Helena choose the radio songs on the drive there and on the drive back, even though her fingers twitch and twitch on the steering wheel whenever Helena puts on pop music. Today one radio station is playing the song about watermelons and sugar, and the other radio station is playing a song where men yell about staying and going, and Helena says _I love you too_ and lets the men yell. She settles back into her seat; she licks a little bit of maple syrup from the corner of her mouth and burps.

“Roll down the bloody window,” Sarah says, without taking her eyes off the road. Her fingers are tapping away at the steering wheel – it’s a happy tapping, the one that would be dancing if she wasn’t also driving a car. Sarah likes any song with loud guitars and men yelling. Helena likes any song about sugar.

She rolls down the window; the cold air comes stampeding in; she closes the window again. She says: “Thank you for lunch, _sestra_.”

“You don’t have to thank me every time.”

“You pay money.”

“Yeah, well,” Sarah says. “We’re too old to dine and dash. Seriously though, next time I’m takin’ you somewhere else.”

“Okay,” Helena says, doing her best to sound as sad as possible. It works – Sarah gets a little wrinkle in her forehead, and she flicks her gaze over to Helena again and again like she’s trying to figure out how much of Helena is joking.

“Does that shit work on Alison?” she says finally.

“Sometimes,” Helena says. She looks away from Sarah, out the window. _Sometimes_ is not very often. Usually what works on Alison is being stupid, or pretending to be stupid; Alison likes feeling smart. But only sometimes.

She can feel Sarah looking at her.

“Look,” Sarah says, “it’s only gonna work on me once, you got it? But let’s get some ice cream.”

“I…” Helena says. “I have to—”

“Alison can watch the kids for another twenty minutes. Maybe they like all that Baby Einstein shit.”

“They have good songs.”

“Of course you like the songs.” Sarah pulls the truck onto another street, one that doesn’t lead back to Bailey Downs. “This is the authentic experience of being my sibling, alright? Playing hookie.”

“What is _hookie_. Is this another curse word. You said no new curse words.”

“Not a curse word. Dunno what it is. Just means ditching and doing somethin’ else instead. Except this is the PG version ‘cause we’re not doing anything illegal.” Sarah turns into a parking space, parks the car, tosses a smile in Helena’s direction. “I mean, I’m not planning on it.”

“Ah,” Helena says. “I see. We are doing crimes. Ice cream is drugs.”

“Yep, exactly.” Sarah turns off the car and jumps out into the parking lot. She stretches. “You coming?” and of course Helena is coming, of course Helena is right behind her. She tumbles out of the car and lands in the parking lot; she breathes in all that unfamiliar empty space. Sarah bumps her shoulder against Helena’s and takes the lead, walking towards a faded pastel shop that Helena has never been to before.

“How did you know this place?” she says.

“Ah,” Sarah says, wincing. “Sometimes I’d get back in town and take Kira here to, uh…buy her enough ice cream to convince her I wasn’t a shitty mum. Not my best.”

“How much ice cream until forgiveness?”

“Enough to get her all jittery on sugar,” Sarah says. “And then S had to deal with the crash and the stomacheache, I guess. We’re not giving you that much.”

“I have a strong stomach.”

“Believe me, I know.” Sarah holds the door open; the little bell jingles, and they step into the yellow room. They are the only ones there besides the lady behind the counter, who does one of Helena’s favorite things: the look and then the double-look when she realizes that they look the same. The light turns on in her brain, and Helena watches her think: _oh! twins._ She loves that face. Every time she wants to say: _twins! twins! Yes, we’re twins. We were born from the same womb. We’re sisters. I’m her twin sister._ She pulls her lips between her teeth and doesn’t say that, but thinks it.

“You had mint chocolate chip?” Sarah says, craning her head to peer into the tubs behind the glass.

“I like bubblegum,” Helena says.

“You would.”

“It’s blue.”

“Yeah, meathead, I know it’s blue.” Sarah orders ice cream – bubblegum in a cone, coffee in a cup – and Helena crouches down to watch the ice crystals grow, slowly, on the strange light green of the mint chocolate chip. They’re playing the watermelon sugar song on the radio again, so she hums along.

“Here,” Sarah says. Helena takes the cone and bites into the ice cream on top. It doesn’t taste like bubblegum. It doesn’t taste like anything; it’s just blue.

“God,” Sarah says, “gives me brain freeze just looking at you. Here, we can sit inside. It’s freezing out there.”

Helena mumbles an affirmative as she keeps eating her ice cream. Sarah eats hers slowly. Maybe because they just had lunch, but Sarah only ate a sandwich. Who knows. She looks happy, which is what matters – she doesn’t look like she’s about to ask the woman at the counter to change the song on the radio. Instead she watches Helena with that fond twisted-up face that means _you’re weird, and I love you_. All of this means _I love you_. Helena always knows.

“Do you have to go to work after this,” she says through her numb cold lips.

Sarah pulls a face. “Dunno,” she says. “Haven’t gotten the call yet, but maybe. What are you up to today?”

“Helping Alison make bake sale cookies,” Helena says. “Teaching Arthur that chair legs are not for eating.”

“Good luck.”

“Maybe this time,” Helena says. There’s a small trickle of blue running down the cone, and she watches it pool on her fingernail. She takes another bite of ice cream. “ _Sestra_ Alison says family dinner on Sunday. She says you did not answer your text message about it.”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “She knows I’ll be there, I never miss family dinner.”

“ _Or_. You could not go, and then bring ice cream.”

“Fifteen minutes late with Starbucks?”

“No. Four hours late, with ice cream.”

“Never mind,” Sarah says. She takes another spoonful of ice cream and smiles. “Do you know this song? They’re singing about sugar, that’s your thing. You should sue.”

“I like the song,” Helena says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “I like it too.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This 50 word story is dedicated to my friend Nina, who said “write a 50 word Helena and Sarah story today and dedicate it to me.” I live to please!

Sarah’s phone buzzes two hours into her shift. Helena sent her a Snapchat: Kira, Gemma, and Charlotte graciously letting Arthur join their painting session. He’s slapped a bright red handprint on the surface of the sky. He looks thrilled about it; Kira looks deeply unimpressed. Helena has captioned it _lol_.


	12. Chapter 12

“Alright,” Sarah says, “we’re out of Bailey Downs, you can sit up.” Helena sits up in the passenger’s seat, checks the back seats: her boys are staring wide-eyed as the car blurs past things they don’t recognize or understand. Arthur looks over and waves a fist at her. She waves one back. She checks the driver’s seat: Sarah has taken off her sunglasses and baseball cap and is roughly shaking her hair loose with one hand.

“Oi,” she says, when she sees Helena looking. “I got something on my face or what?”

“Just your nose,” Helena says. She pops back into the front seat and turns up the radio. “Thank you for having us for dinner.”

Sarah idly salutes. “You’re cuttin’ the vegetables, though.”

“Good. I am very good with knife. You can be in charge of watching babies. Tell Don that just because Arthur is crawling, does not mean we love Arthur more.”

“Your mum loves you both the same,” Sarah says in the direction of the rearview mirror. “And we’re goin’ with Don?”

“Donnie gets confused,” Helena says. “And he says Donald is the duck, like on television. So Don.”

“I mean,” Sarah says, “we can change the names later, if you want. You know that right? Alison can just print another birth certificate, who gives a shit.”

“You do not like the names.”

“I don’t care, and even if I did it’s none of my business. They’re your kids.” Helena sneaks a peek directly at Sarah – she looks unconcerned, like she’s telling the truth. Then she adds: “I think Fe’s gonna hold a grudge against you for the rest of both your lives, though. He definitely wanted a Felix Jr.” A smile pulls at her mouth with little fingers: a joke, she’s joking.

“Many sorries,” Helena says. “I forget. He gave me his jacket, so I will name my babies after him.”

“He didn’t even want to give you his bloody jacket,” Sarah says. “Do you still have it? You could give it back, maybe he’ll name his kids after you.”

Helena snorts. “This would be wonderful,” she says. “But jacket burned up in tragic barn fire. Very sad.”

“ _Barn_ fire?”

“I will tell you when you are older.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says, easily and without feeling. She pulls the truck over and parks it, jumps out to begin the complicated process of getting the babies moved from one cushioned baby seat to another cushioned baby seat. Helena helps her help Helena. They shuffle the babies inside; Don helps by saying _abababa. Baba._ Arthur helps by laughing at them as they bring the stroller across Sarah’s doorstep and into the apartment and begin the next round of moving the babies to another cushioned baby seat. When it’s all over Helena wants to lie down on the ground. Instead she goes to the kitchen and grabs a vegetable at random.

“This one?” she says.

“No, meathead, the carrots.”

So then she grabs the carrots and begins washing them – you have to scrub all the dirt off, it lingers in the cracks in the outside of the carrot. Alison has a little brush just for scrubbing carrots. Sarah doesn’t, so Helena just uses her hands.

“I’m picking up Kira at 5:30,” Sarah says. She rummages in the refrigerator and pulls out a package of beef. “So I’ll get this in the pot and then head out, don’t burn down the house.”

“We are not in a house. Soccer practice?”

“Debate, actually. She loves it. Got that from Cos, I’m sure. All of my debates have been punching ‘til someone passes out.”

The carrots are clean now, so Helena turns the sink off. The cutting board is where it always is. The knife is where it always is. Helena cuts the carrots and feels a wave of peace, sudden and overwhelming. Carrots. Debate practice. Car seats, baby bags. She didn’t know any of it was possible. She couldn’t have even dreamed it.

“You alright?” Sarah says, and Helena realizes that the feeling of peace is strong enough to tug at the cord that rests between the two of them.

“Yes,” she says. “Good feelings. Today is a good day.”

“Oh yeah?” Sarah says. “Any reason?”

Helena gestures with the knife. “Dinner,” she says.

“One track mind,” Sarah says, smiling a little. “Keep choppin’, I’m gonna—” and she fiddles with the record player in the corner. The music turns on: a quieter rock guitar and a woman singing about dancing slowly. Helena keeps chopping. They put the meat and the carrots and the potatoes and the broth into the pot, and turn on the pot, and leave the pot to quietly cook itself; the same woman sings her way through several songs in the background, and Sarah hums along. Helena doesn’t know the tune but she tries to hum along anyways.

By the time Sarah’s left, Helena’s almost gotten the words of the latest song – something about eating and being alive. She keeps the song down in her throat and wanders over to check on the boys. Arthur is asleep; Don is awake, and he smiles at her when she gets close enough. _Amama_ , he says. He claps his little hands together.

“Hello,” Helena says quietly. “ _Pryv’it_.” She crouches down in front of his little bouncing seat and touches the soft downiness of his hair. The music is quiet and the air smells like meat. There isn’t really a good way to explain that this is what she named Don after: the idea of a home, of cooked meat and songs you can hum along to. To name someone, she thinks, is to promise them something. She wanted to promise her boys all of it – the warm piles of folded laundry at the Hendrixes’ house and Art holding her as she gave birth and the stability of their hands, the way they held onto things. The way they held onto her.

She cradles his little head in her hand and then stands up to check on the meat, to start the record over again. The song begins again. Helena sits back down in front of Don and holds out one finger, which he coos at and grabs in his pudgy hand. They stay there for a while – Don watching, solemn, as Helena slowly hums the songs until they come together and mean something. The meat and vegetables cook in the pot and get soft. Helena doesn’t move her hand.

Eventually the key turns in the lock, and Sarah and Kira come spilling inside; Kira puts her backpack on its hook by the door, and she and Sarah kick off their shoes next to each other. When Kira sees Helena she beams and waves enthusiastically. Helena waves back with one hand. The other hand she leaves where it is, so Don can continue holding on tight.


	13. Chapter 13

Sarah really should have bought wrapping paper, but it seems so stupid to buy wrapping paper when Alison has so much sitting in the labeled bins of her music room slash craft room slash meditation chamber slash laundry room slash whatever Oscar has conscripted the room for this week. (Last week was a Physics project, apparently.) It’s two days before Helena’s birthday and she’s crouched down going through Alison’s bins for the second time this month when the door opens and Helena says: “Oops.”

“Hey, meathead,” Sarah says. “How’s, uh. Y’know. Stuff.”

“Stuff is…good,” Helena says, sidling awkwardly into the room. She is holding something behind her back. “Very nice. Lots of things to do. I am in the room, for, um…keyboard. I need the keyboard. For music.”

“Just say you’re here to wrap your present.”

“I am here to wrap my present.”

“Great, me too. I won’t look at yours if you don’t look at mine. Deal?”

“Okay,” Helena says, and sits down on the floor next to Sarah. She picks up a red roll of wrapping paper covered in glittering snowflakes, frowns at it, and puts it down. Picks up the next one. “ _Sestra_ ,” she says, “what kind of special present paper do you like.”

“I really don’t give a shit,” Sarah says. “Do, uh, the blue one. Do you have the—” Helena hands her a pair of scissors. “Ah, cheers.”

Sarah haphazardly cuts around the approximate size of Helena’s present: a book called _Interpreting Literature and the Arts_ that Sarah has hollowed out and filled with expensive European chocolate and a pair of _actually_ nice sunglasses. She’s counting the book’s destruction as part of the present; cutting out all of the pages had felt great, and she knows Helena’s always down to shit all over literature.

She passes the scissors back to Helena just as Helena is reaching for them. “Hey,” she says, “d’you know what Alison’s actually planning? For the party? Did she tell you?”

“Big secret,” Helena says peacably. She lies down on the wrapping paper, somehow using her torso as a size measurement. “I think _sestra_ Alison wants it to be bigger than _sestra_ Cosima’s birthday was. Because we are two.”

“Seems sort of unfair to _sestra_ Cosima.”

“Shh!” Helena says. “I think there will be guilt cake.”

“Oh, well, if there’s guilt cake.” A roll of tape nudges Sarah in the ribs and she takes it. “Here,” she says, “turn your back to me, you can’t see this shit. It’s sacred.”

“Is it a Bible.”

“No, it isn’t a Bible. You think I’d get you a Bible?”

“Maybe you have found God.”

“Where, in Alison’s bloody craft room?”

“He is everywhere,” Helena says in a lofty voice. “Also I am glad you did not get me a Bible. I have one. Hm. How do you wrap presents?”

“Lots of tape.”

“You have the tape.”

“And I’m really, really using it,” Sarah says. She haphazardly folds the wrapping paper over the book and tapes it together as best she can. She frowns at it, appraising: no, it sucks. It really, truly sucks. She hands the tape behind her back to Helena without comment.

“I’m excited,” Helena says quietly. “I like parties.”

Sarah nudges her elbow back so it can gently bump Helena’s. “I’m excited too,” she says, keeping her voice just as quiet. “I really—”

The door opens; Alison blinks down at the two of them, sitting back to back in a nest of wrapping paper and extraneous tape. “Oh!” she says. The one syllable is packed with all five stages of grief.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Hey. We’re gonna clean this up.”

Behind her, she hears the long and drawn out sound of tape being unrolled and then cut off. Slowly, Helena sticks it down…somewhere.

“I told you both I’d be happy to wrap your presents,” Alison says, sounding so chipper about it that she’s pushing at the boundaries of hysteria.

“Yeah, but you’re busy,” Sarah says.

“And this comes from the heart,” Helena says solemnly. “All of it. Especially the ribbons.”

“Wait, are you doing ribbons?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, for sure, me – yep, me too. We’re all doing ribbons. Hey, Alison, did you need something?”

Alison bites down hard on her lower lip. “No,” she says. “No, no, I’m going to leave you two to your…authentic present wrapping. Helena, when you’re done, I think Don’s about ready for his nap!”

Helena must nod, because Alison nods back and then exits. Sarah holds her breath and listens to the pattering of Alison’s footsteps retreating purposefully away; she can keep herself from laughing for about ten seconds, and then Helena’s loud snort sets her off.

“We did bad,” Helena says through giggles. “Oh, we did a bad job, _sestra_.”

“Holy shit, I thought she was gonna kill us. Or that she was just gonna start laughing, did you see that at the end there? She almost broke.”

“Your present must be very ugly. Mine is perfect.”

“Ah, piss off, mine’s…fine. It’s probably yours. Dunno _where_ you’re putting the ribbon, yeah?”

“Everywhere,” Helena says. “But not yet. More tape first.”

“God, I hope Cos used a gift bag,” Sarah says. “Otherwise you and me are in some deep present wrapping shit.” She leans back on her hands, sighs. “You mind if I just put a bow on this?”

“No,” Helena says, “I do not mind.” She leans back too; her shoulders bump against Sarah’s, and Sarah tilts her head back to lightly knock her skull against Helena’s.

“It isn’t anything big,” she says. “I didn’t get you anything big, I mean. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Hm,” Helena says. Sarah speaks Helena well enough by now to know that means _my hopes are very high, and I know for a fact that you aren’t going to let them down, but I’m not going to say that out loud because I don’t want you to feel more pressure._

“Hm,” Sarah says back. She knows Helena knows what that means. She closes her eyes for a second and feels the warm rise and fall of Helena’s breathing, Helena’s back against hers. “I meant it,” Sarah says. “I’m excited for all of this. I like having a birthday party. I like it better when you’re there, ‘cause the pressure’s off me.”

“I like it too,” Helena says. “When you are there. It’s like dreaming, except I am awake.” She pauses. “And I can taste the food when I eat it.”

“Alison’s gonna be a baking machine, huh,” Sarah says, lowering her head back down and picking up a searingly bright and spangly silver bow. She sticks it on the middle. “You can crash at mine tomorrow, so you don’t get… _underfoot_.”

“I am never under feet,” Helena says. “Never ever. But okay, I will come and stay with you tomorrow.” There are more ominous tape sounds, and then: “Uh oh.”

“Uh oh, what’s uh oh.”

“Nothing,” Helena says airily. “Nothing nothing. Hm. Will you go help Don fall asleep, please? Not because of anything. I would do it, but…he…likes you best.”

“I know that’s not true, but I like hearing it,” Sarah says, “so sure, I’ll leave. _Don’t_ look, I’m taking your present with me.”

“He also likes the purple blanket,” Helena says. “He loves to make vomit all over it. And shits. He loves the stinky purple blanket, you have to get it for him.”

“Really selling it, thanks.” Sarah stands up and gathers a few handfuls of wrapping debris, crumples them up in her hands. “Text me,” she says, “and we’ll figure out when I’ll come pick you up, yeah?”

“Okay okay,” Helena says, through more frantic taping sounds. “Goodbye.”

“Yeah, bye,” Sarah says, exiting the craft room and closing the door behind her. She’s trying to find Alison’s trash can when Donnie comes down the stairs, humming something cheery that ends when he sees the scraps of wrapping paper in her hands and the present shoved under one arm.

“Oh,” he says, “Alison was gonna…”

“Gotta dash, actually,” Sarah says, “see you at the party!” and she books it out the door and across Alison’s backyard and just about makes it to the garage before she has to double over, laughing so hard she wheezes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos & comment if you enjoyed! :)


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